Kate Kaye writes that marketers were caught off-guard by FTC Commissioner Julie Brill’s “Reclaim Your Name” initiative, described in her keynote address as CFP this week:

The Direct Marketing Association was caught off guard by Commissioner Brill’s announcement. “DMA has been in discussion with Commissioner Brill regarding ways to increase transparency in the ‘data broker’ industry, but was surprised to see her announcement of this new initiative,” said Rachel Thomas, VP of government affairs at DMA. “The FTC’s Section 6B inquiry into ‘data brokers’ is still ongoing, and the Commission has yet to articulate a specific problem that would justify a call for congressional action in this area,” she continued in an emailed statement.

Ms. Brill indicated that the FTC believes mobile device IDs are personally-identifiable. Many of the companies using device IDs to track in-store shopping behavior and other location-based interactions hold that they are not. “Information linked to specific devices is, for all intents and purposes, linked to individuals,” she said.